Lynda Weinman on Design

Wendy: You have a lot of new features on your Web
site, Lynda.com, including interactive features. How has this affected
your traffic?

Lynda: It's affected it greatly and in a positive way. We now
have over 1 million independent visitors per month. Before we added
the new areas to our site, we had about 80,000 visitors per month. For
those readers who aren't familiar with the interactive features you
are alluding to, we now offer tips, discussions, a jobs board, a store,
and polls. We don't offer ad banners, so those numbers don't bring us
direct revenue, but our sales have steadily increased ever since we
started lynda.com.

There are too many rectangular
graphics on the Webeverything on the Web comes in rectangular
packages without one realizing it  the Web browser itself, tables,
frames, images.

Wendy: In
the thousands of Web sites you have seen, and with all your teaching
experience, what are the common mistakes that Web designers make?

Lynda: I still see a lot of people making unnecessarily large
images, or not compressing graphics with the right format. There are
still lots of fringes around transparent graphics, and images that are
too large, causing unnecessary page scrolling. Animation and Flash can
be easily abused with way too much stuff going on and not enough focus
on content. A lot of people don't put their type in tables, so the width
of their type columns goes from screen edge to screen edge and is difficult
to read.

The list goes on and on, but on a positive note, I do see more and
more excellent sites as the Web matures.

Web
Navigation, by Jennifer Flemming, recommended by Lynda.

Designing Web Graphics 3, one of the
many design books Lynda has written. Available at Lynda.com

Wendy: Do you have any general tips that
would improve almost any designer's work?

Lynda: Make a list of the top three things you want your site
to communicate and make sure that the design supports those goals. The
most common mistake I see is a lack of communication hierarchy. There's
a great book on this subject, called Web Navigation by Jennifer
Flemming. This book really helps you get your priorities in check. My
books and work will help you develop design strategies to make those
priority items stand out.

You can use all kinds of visual devices, such as color, type, layout,
and scale to make things stand out and recede in importance. There are
too many rectangular graphics on the Webeverything on the Web
comes in rectangular packages without one realizing it  the Web
browser itself, tables, frames, images. I enjoyed your last column on
roughing up edges of graphics (Rough it
Up). Techniques like those you described really help developers
break out of that boring and confining rectangular box.

I don't have time to design
anymore, and I really think my strongest point in this industry is
as a teacher, not a designer.

Wendy: Do you design Web sites (other than your own)?

Lynda: I have never created a Web site other than our own. I
got out of the design and animation business when I had my daughter
in 1989, way before the Web explosion happened, and went into teaching.
I originally built my Web site as a resource for my students when I
was teaching at Art Center College of Design. I never dreamed it would
grow up to have thousands of pages and millions of visitors from all
over the world. It's been quite a journey so far! I don't have time
to design anymore, and I really think my strongest point in this industry
is as a teacher, not a designer.